If you want a helpful tip on proving social media ROI and developing a business model with online competitive intelligence, keep reading!
This article is going to detail a fundamental insight to using Twitter analysis to create sets of priceless data that can be used for marketing, sales, product development, and future strategy.
Imagine This Scenario
Your competitor has 100 employees on Twitter.
The average number of followers each person has is 250.
The average number of people they each follow is is 250.
Basic math says that equals
- 25000 people following them
- 25000 people they are following
Basic Math is Wrong
The reality is that
- 12500 people are cross-following them
- 12500 people they are cross-following
It is radically important to realize that within any given population of audience members that a significant number of people will follow and friend like-minded people.
Why Cross-Followers are Important
If we look at 100 employees and the people they follow there will be several segment of users that have a high number of ‘cross followers.’
These individuals usually fall into these categories
- Other Employees
- Team Leaders
- Special Project Interests
- Clients
- Prospects
Benefits of Understanding Cross-Follower Segments
Other Employees: by understanding how employees in competitive businesses behave, you can track customer issues, employee challenges, or even recruit top-talent.
Team Leaders: watching team leaders is an easy way to identify where they are looking on a daily basis. This provides insight to forward-looking project plans and for accidental exposure of critical information.
Special Project Interests: knowing what five people out of a hundred are focused on a specific departmental project allows you to tactical plan around them. This can be critical for hiring away talent or understanding when a project is going live.
Clients: by monitoring the ten sales people you can see what prospects they are engaging with today. This could represent priceless marketing dollars that can be used to create a lead list you didn’t have to pay for.
Prospects: ever tracked hashtags or mentions for competitive webinars, trade shows, or brand mentions? This list of people who are considering a competitor begs for a creative marketing strategy.
Build a Process & Tracking Dashboard
Once you’ve wrapped your head around the concept of getting some useful data from Twitter, you need to think about how you can track it through a dashboard for your team.